Maria Ruiz de Burton was a writer, entrepreneur and businesswoman, and the first Mexican-American woman to publish a novel in English. Born in 1832 in Baja California, Mexico to a prominent Spanish family, Maria Amparo Ruiz was fifteen when the Mexican-American war ended and California became part of the United States. She married the commander of the American forces that invaded Baja shortly after the end of the war, and his career took them all over the United States, giving her an insider view at every level of American society. Her sentimental novels disguised pointed critiques of American culture and policy inside thrilling tales of love and intrigue. She spent most of her adult life fighting to regain legal rights to the land her family had owned for generations (essentially all of San Diego county). After her death, her books were forgotten for over 100 years, but were rediscovered in the 1990s and are now recognized as important examples of early Chicano literature.
Our guest is Maria Carla Sanchez, associate professor of English Literature and Women’s Studies at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
María Carla Sánchez teaches U. S. literature at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where she is an Associate Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies. She is co-editor, with Linda Schlossberg, of Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race, and Religion (NYU P 2000); author of Reforming the World: Social Activism and the Problem of Fiction in Nineteenth-Century America (U Iowa P 2008), as well as essays on women writers, pedagogy, and race relations; and an associate editor for College Literature. Her book-in-progress looks at nineteenth-century U. S. and Mexican literature, slavery, and genre.
Music featured in this episode included
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THE ABOLITIONIST Ellen Garrison
THE BYZANTINE Irene of Athens
THE BUTTERFLY IN THE SUN Mata Hari
THE COUNTERFEIT COUNTESS Janina Mehlberg
THE VOYAGER Hannah Masury Howe
THE SOLID CITIZEN Frances Perkins
THE EQUESTRIAN Anna Sewell
THE GUNG-HO ORIGINAL Helen Foster Snow
CHRISTMAS IN SWEDEN Selma Lagerlöf
THE WILD CHILD Alice Roosevelt
THE BOSTON BRAHMIN Ethel Gibson Allen
THE BLOOD COUNTESS Elizabeth Báthory
THE MONGOL KHATUN Genghis Khan's Daughters
THE QUEEN OF HAITI Marie-Louise Christophe
THE ANTI-FASCIST Gerda Taro
THE CLEANING LADY Seraphine of Senlis
THE WESTERN WOMAN Rattlesnake Kate Slaughterback
THE WOMAN KING Hatshepsut
THE PUNA HELE Mary Kawena Puku'i
THE ACCUSED Clara Ford
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